Iran says 73 killed in ‘terrorist’ attack at ceremony honouring slain Qassem Soleimani, who died in 2020 US drone attack
Authorities said some people were injured while fleeing afterward. Footage suggested that the second blast occurred some 15 minutes after the first. A delayed second explosion is often used by militants to target emergency personnel responding to the scene and inflict more casualties.
People could be heard screaming in state TV footage.
Kerman’s deputy governor, Rahman Jalali, called the attack “terroristic,” without elaborating. Iran has multiple foes who could be behind the assault, including exile groups, militant organizations and state actors.
Iran has supported Hamas as well as the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Soleimani was the architect of Iran’s regional military activities and is hailed as a national icon among supporters of Iran’s theocracy.
Trump’s new justification for killing Soleimani: he said ‘bad things’
He also helped secure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government after the 2011 Arab spring protests against him turned into a civil, and later a regional, war that still rages today.
Relatively unknown in Iran until the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Soleimani’s popularity and mystique grew after American officials called for his killing over his help arming militants with penetrating roadside bombs that killed and maimed US troops.
A decade and a half later, Soleimani had become Iran’s most recognisable battlefield commander, ignoring calls to enter politics but growing as powerful, if not more, than its civilian leadership.
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Iran-US tensions soar as thousands mourn slain general Qassem Soleimani
Ultimately, a drone strike launched by the Trump administration killed the general, part of escalating incidents that followed America’s 2018 unilateral withdrawal from Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers.
Soleimani’s death has drawn large processions in the past. At his funeral in 2020, a stampede broke out and at least 56 people were killed and more than 200 were injured as thousands thronged the procession.